Living with mental illness can be challenging and difficult; it can make the simplest of things feel very difficult. However, you might also like to share positive aspects of your daily life. It doesn’t matter how small it is – if it’s an achievement for you, bring it to the sunshine room. This kind of acknowledgement is important for every individual; it can also be very encouraging for others.

I have been looking for a place where I can tell people about good things that happen to me. I hope this will be just the place.

Lots of bad things have happened to me, including attempting suicide 17 times. But lots of good things happen too, and it seems to confuse people if I keep switching between telling them the bad ones and the good ones, as if I should be consistent, as if they can't believe I could be suicidal one day and ecstatic the next. My life is not consistent though. It is extremely eventful and varied and I hope people will enjoy hearing about my good things on this part of the forum. Hopefully if I tell you about them, they will get more real to me and become more important than the bad things.

So, first good thing: last week had a long talk with a man who is the Director of the mental health club I belong to in my town. He is bipolar and 63 and surviving brilliantly. He is willing to share his wisdom with me! Hurrah! At our first proper meeting he told me that he uses a Red, Amber, Green system to be aware of his mental states. He said I could go away and think what things put me in a more Green state of mind. We can use these to push ourselves towards health. They will be different for different people, but the principle is the same. I have a good list of them now, and I keep spotting more as they happen by accident - now they are on the list, I can do them deliberately too.

One of the things on my list that I find puts me in a better state of mind when I am at Red (in crisis), is going to a 'place of safety'. I often put myself at extreme risk in order to stimulate the police to come and section me, so that I can get to the 136 suite at my local hospital. I love the 136 suite. It is safe and calm and I can cry as hard as I like and nobody can get me. I always become so much better there, and spend some time at Amber, then eventually back to Green again. However, sometimes they say I should not be doing this, that I should be able to manage myself and not need to go to hospital. So lately I have been trying to replicate the important features of the 136 suite in my bedroom at home, so that I can do it all myself!

Hence: second good thing: my home 136 is starting to work! At 8.45am today I began to feel ill (psychotic). The invisible things that beat me over the head were doing that again. At first I tried to carry on making my packed lunch, but I kept dropping plates and knives and cups, so I sat on the floor. The things seemed to be a bit less angry when I wasn't trying to do anything. I tried going upstairs and they chased me up there as if they wanted me to go that way. When I got there they gave me a good beating, so I could have a nice catharitc cry, but then I totally gave in to the idea of not trying to go out this morning, but just having a lie down till they had finished, and eventually they got calmer and backed off. So instead of them chasing me to the railway line or the motorway bridge as usual, they had chased me to my new 136 in the bedroom! Wow! How did they know? They have cottoned on very quickly. I lay there for a bit and soon they started to become visible. I could see their orange eyes looking at me from all around the room. They were small and not very threatening. It was more like they were guarding me, keeping me safe. Soon I could see that they were owls. I love owls. I have several soft toy ones by my bed in my new 136 arrangement. These ones looked quite friendly, and I sat up very slowly and reached out and one of them let me stroke it! Wow!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. I'm sorry there were some negative things mixed in with the positive ones, I feel like I had to put them there to explain what the positive things meant. If the moderators want to move this whole post to somewhere other than the Sunshine Room, I understand. But I really like the idea of the Sunshine Room. I'll probably come back with another good thing to report tomorrow night. I may even be able to find one with no bad bits in it.

Ah, here's one:

Third good thing today:My children finished school for the summer at 3.10pm! It is the holidays! My son wanted to pick blackberries, so my Dad and I took him to a meadow where there were some and we picked two boxes full and ate them for tea. Yummy yum!

Hi faithhopelove (a lovely username, by the way ),My bedroom is my safe place, too. I don't get psychotic but I do get intrusive thoughts - I can feel it happening as they sort of over-ride my positive thoughts/ sleep process as I lay in bed. They range from old memories to feelings of failure/condemnation/fear. The things just won't go away. My bedroom's very like the rooms I've had in MH hospital as well - little furniture, cream walls & very peaceful. I find it very reassuring and safe.I like to cuddle a pillow with lavender sprinkled on it.I like the red/amber/green self-monitoring idea, so simple. It's one of those "why didn't i think of that?" ideas. I'll definitely try that.The moderaters are not likely to remove your post, they're not very active on here at all. Besides I found your post really interesting & helpful, and others will, too, I'm sure.Your description of blackberry picking brought some lovely memories back for me of when I used to take my two (grown up now) out into the nearby countryside picking, & scoffing our berries later with a huge dollop of icecream. Happy days I hope you have a lovely time over the hols & I'd really like to read more posts from you - you have a way of describing things that's really easy to understand.Thanks,Sheila x

Thank you for such an encouraging reply! I'm so glad you liked my post. It really boosts my confidence for writing more. Bless you. And I hope you are feeling safe and peaceful tonight.

It's great to hear what we have in common. I put lavender oil on my pillow too, as the smell is so nice and relaxing. I also love the smell of roses, and have some face cream with rose scent in it which I put on before I try to sleep. My bedroom has cream walls like yours, but I enjoy lots of jewel-like colours and interesting detail as well, so I am putting up pictures to look at, of places I have been happy, and artwork done by my family. So far I have a pen and ink sketch of Gloucester Cathedral cloisters by my sister, a woven picture of my grandma's old cottage by my mum, and a painting of the Filmy Fern House at Kew, painted by me when I was about 8, and framed by my Dad.

Talking of art, that is the next good thing I have to report here in the sunshine room. Today my Dad, my son and I went to visit 4 artists studios as part of the Open Studios weekends they put on for free in July every year. We saw watercolours, ceramics, silver jewlery and stained glass. There were natural designs, abstract geometric patterns and portraits. It was all very inspiring, and hopefully we will be able to do some art of our own during the holidays.

One art activity I really want to try is marbling - you buy special marbling inks (I have asked for some for my birthday), and you drip them onto a tray of water. They float on the water and don't mix, but you can swirl them into amazing patterns, then carefully place a piece of card on top and the ink sticks to the card and makes a lovely design. When its dry you can make it into greetings cards or decorate things with it, like they used to do for the endpapers in old books.

This combines several of the things on my list of what makes me 'Greener' in my mental health:

1. Trying new things - this gives me hope - I am always seeking new experiences or new ways of doing old familiar things, in the hope of serendipitously finding something helpful that I can use my recovery

2. Creativity - making something unique that has never been done exactly the same by anyone ever - which reminds you that you are a unique individual, special and never-to-be-repeated, which is good for a feeling of intrinsic worth

3. Colour - I respond very well to bold, strong, bright and jewel-like colours. For others, pastel shades might have equally good effects. My sister prefers the sublety of black, white and greys, which bring out texture. (It is interesting to see what furniture and ornaments we have both collected over the years and how they reflect our different tastes. If someone gives me a browny-grey earthernware vase as a present, I am likely to pass it on to her. If someone gives her a bright green fluffy scarf, it is likely to end up living with me!)

As well as having colours around me in my room to create a positive background atmosphere, colours can also be specifically useful to me when I am actually in the grip of acute mental distress. The first technique I ever learnt for coping with my tactile hallucinations was told to me many years ago by an Occupational Therapist who was bipolar. I met her at a new church we'd gone to, quite at random, and when we'd talked for a while and I told her what I experienced, she said, "To pull your mind out of the state where you feel things like invisible knives cutting your face, look around the room and deliberately pick out colours and name them aloud." This is so simple, but it is amazingly effective. I have been taught lots of other techniques using one's five senses over the 13 years since then, which come under the general banner of "Mindfulness" (a very broad category of practices - some of which really exacerbate my psychosis, by the way, so I have to pick and choose), but this one is still the best for me. I wonder if anyone else uses this, or a variation on it?

Anyway, here's hoping that our dreams tonight will reflect pleasant swirls of colour, or the warm glow of stained glass, or the sparkle of sunlight on silver, or the peace of cream simplicity.

I 'graduated' MBT today - it was the last day of a 9 month treatment programme of talking therapy and psycho-education. Some of it has been gruelling emotional work, but on the whole it was useful. I am glad I did it. And I'm glad it is over. I feel free! Light! Happy!

We're going to have a day out in our local cathedral city tomorrow, have a picnic on the grass, buy cakes, go to the museum. I'm looking forward to it!